Passage (66 page)

That at least she could do something about. She called Betty Peterson again, but the line was busy. Waiting to try again, she started through her messages. Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Ortiz, wanting to tell her a dream he’d had the night before. Guadalupe. She must not have gotten the note Joanna had left with the sub nurse.

She went up to four-west. As soon as Guadalupe saw her, she handed her a sheet of paper with a single line typed on it: “ . . . (unintelligible) . . . smoke . . . (unintelligible).”

“You didn’t get my message?” Joanna asked. “That I wanted you to keep writing down what Coma Carl said?”

“I got it, and that’s everything he said,” Guadalupe said. “He’s pretty much stopped talking.”

“When did this happen?” Joanna asked.

“It’s been a gradual falling off,” Guadalupe said. “He would
murmur at wider and wider separated intervals, and it got harder and harder to hear him.”

As if he were getting farther and farther away, Joanna thought.

“By the time I sent you that message he’d pretty much stopped altogether, except for a few unintelligible words,” she said. “That’s really why I called you that day, to ask you if you wanted to call it off.”

Call it off. Joanna thought of the wireless operator in the Marconi shack, hunched over the telegraph key, tirelessly sending.

“He hasn’t said anything for nearly a week.”

“Can I see him?” Joanna asked. “Is his wife in with him?”

Guadalupe shook her head. “She went out to the airport. His brother’s coming in. Sure, go on in.”

There were three more bags hanging from the IV stand and two more monitors. The IV monitor began to beep, and a nurse Joanna didn’t know bustled in to check his IV lines. “You can talk to him,” she said to Joanna.

And say what? “My best friend was shot by a rogue-raver?” “This little girl I know is dying?” “The
Titanic
’s going down?”

Mrs. Aspinall came in, accompanied by a tall, bluff man. “Oh, hello, Dr. Lander,” she said and went over to the bed and took Carl’s bruised and battered hand. “Carl,” she said, “Martin’s here.”

“Hello, Carl,” Martin said, “I got here as soon as I could,” and Joanna almost expected Carl to stir, in spite of the mask and the feeding tube, and murmur, “Too far for him to come,” but he didn’t. He lay, gray and silent in the bed, and Joanna was suddenly too tired to do anything but go home and go to bed.

On the way there, it occurred to her with a kind of horror that she might be catching the flu. Richard won’t let me go under if I’m sick, she thought, but in the morning she felt much better, and when she got to work, there was a message from Betty Peterson on her answering machine. “I just realized I never told you the name of the book:
Mazes and Mirrors.”

Mazes and Mirrors.
Joanna could instantly see the title in her mind’s eye, lettered in gold across a blue cover, though
oddly, the name didn’t conjure up the rest of the cover. Joanna squinted, trying to envision a ship under the title and then Queen Elizabeth with a mustache and glasses, but neither seemed right. It will probably turn out to be Windsor Castle, Joanna thought. But at least we know the title.

“I told you it began with an M,” Betty’s voice was saying. “And there it was, in the margin, next to Nadine’s picture. Just a minute, let me read it to you. I’ve got it right here.” There was a pause, and her voice continued, “ ‘Betty, just think, no more of Mr. Briarley’s boring stories about the
Titanic
and no more
Mazes and Mirrors!
Your pal in second period, Nadine.’ You still need to call me, though. I talked to my little sister and she told me this thing about Mr. Briarley. Oh, and I called Blake Dirkson. He was the year ahead of us. He couldn’t remember the name of the book either, but he said it had one of those quill pens and a bottle of ink on the cover. He smoked a lot of pot in high school, though, so I don’t know. Anyway, call me. ’Bye.”

A quill pen and a bottle of ink? Oddly, that seemed vaguely familiar, too. We’re all confabulating, she thought. She called Betty, but the line was busy again. Which isn’t a surprise, Joanna thought, considering how long she talks when she’s just leaving a message, and called Kit.

“Mazes and Mirrors,”
Kit said. “Great. That’ll make it a lot easier.”

“She says she thinks she remembers a picture of Queen Elizabeth in a ruff on the cover, or a quill pen and a bottle of ink. I still think it’s a ship, but it could be one of the others.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Kit said. “I haven’t been able to find out anything on a post office, but I’m still looking.”

And if she couldn’t locate the post office, how else could Joanna find Mr. Briarley? He’d mentioned the Palm Court. She needed to ask Kit where it was and what deck it was on, although the easiest way to find him would probably be just to follow the steward when the bearded man asked him to go find Mr. Briarley.

Richard stuck his head in the door. “I just wondered if you’d finished typing up your account,” he said, “and if you were feeling better.”

“Yes,” she said, handing him the transcript and Mrs. Woollam’s. “Tish can come tomorrow at two. How are things coming with Mrs. Troudtheim?”

“We isolated three neurotransmitters that were present in both of your exit scans and all of Mrs. Troudtheim’s: LHRH, theta-asparcine, and DABA. LHRH was also present in the template scan, so it’s probably not the culprit, but the DABA may be a possibility. It’s an endorphin inhibitor, and Dr. Jamison thinks beta-endorphins, rather than being just a side effect, may be a factor in sustaining the NDE-state, and that the DABA may be inhibiting them.” He waved the transcripts at her. “Thanks. Tomorrow at two.”

The phone rang. Richard said, “I’ll talk to you later,” and Joanna picked it up, thinking, too late, It’s probably Mr. Mandrake.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” Betty Peterson said. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Did you find out whatever it was you needed to find out?”

“Find out?”

“From
Mazes and Mirrors.”

“Oh. No, not yet,” Joanna said.

“Wasn’t that the luckiest thing, finding it in my yearbook like that? I guess it’s a good thing Nadine hated Mr. Briarley, isn’t it?”

“You said you had something to tell me about Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said. “Something your sister told you.”

“Oh, yes. I called her right after you called me to see if maybe she knew the name of the book. She was three years behind us, but I thought maybe they might have had the same textbook. I mean, our history books were ancient. They said John F. Kennedy was president.”

It was like talking to one of her NDEers. “Did she know it?” Joanna asked to get her back on track.

“No, but she told me this awful story, and since you said you’d gone to see Mr. Briarley I thought I should tell you. Did you meet his niece? Her name’s Kathy or Katie or something.”

“Kit,” Joanna said.

“Kit,” Betty said. “Well, she was supposed to get married, she was having this big wedding, and Mr. Briarley was supposed
to give her away. My little sister said he talked about it constantly in class, even more than he used to talk about the
Titanic.
I guess she was his favorite niece, and then her fiancé-my sister told me his name, but I don’t remember it—”

“Kevin,” Joanna said, thinking, I was right. He wasn’t willing to take on the responsibility of an Alzheimer’s patient. He left Kit at the altar.

“Kevin, that’s right. Well, anyway, the morning of the wedding, he went to pick up some film, and this kid ran a red light and plowed right into him.”

It was so different from what she had thought Betty was going to say that for a minute Joanna couldn’t take it in.

“Killed him instantly,” Betty said. “It was awful, and I guess Mr. Briarley was the one who had to tell her. My little sister says she thinks that was what caused his Alzheimer’s, that he’s just trying to forget.”

One small part of her mind thought, That’s ridiculous, that isn’t what causes Alzheimer’s, but she didn’t say it, couldn’t say it. Belated understanding pounded at her, memories of words that she hadn’t comprehended, that she’d misinterpreted, thudding like the medicine ball hitting the gymnasium wall.

Kit asking her if people in car accidents had NDEs, if they were pleasant. “They’re not frightening, are they?” she’d said. And “My aunt made me read
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
after—” and, “Uncle Pat was very kind to me,” saying, “Sometimes he relives past events.”

She should have seen it. Kit’s thinness, her shadowed eyes, the photo of her and the blond young man, smiling, and Mr. Briarley saying, “Kevin should be here by now,” quoting, “ ‘The bride hath paced into the hall.’ ”

Oh, my God, Joanna thought, horrified, I made her watch
Runaway Bride!

“My sister knew this girl who was there and she said it was just tragic,” Betty was saying. “I guess she was already in her wedding dress and everything.”

Did it have a train? Joanna wondered, feeling sick. “Which wedding dress do you like the best?” she’d asked Kit. “I want a big wedding, with all the trimmings,” Vielle had said.

“And since you said you’d gone over to see Mr. Briarley, I thought you should know so you wouldn’t put your foot in it.”

Put my foot in it, Joanna thought. She had sat there in the kitchen, casually discussing near-death experiences, blithely telling Kit heaven was a hallucination of the dying brain.

I have to call Kit, she thought, I have to tell her how sorry I am, and hung up unceremoniously on the still-chattering Betty. She punched in Kit’s number and then hung up and went to see her instead.

I was going to rescue her, she thought. I was going to play W. S. Gilbert and save her from drowning, so I invited her over to Vielle’s to discuss weddings and watch a movie with no less than five of them in it. She remembered Kit’s intentness watching it, as if she were afraid there was going to be a test, but the movie itself was the test. No, wrong word. Ordeal. Trial by fire.

I couldn’t have done worse if I’d tried, she thought, getting out of the car and going up the walk. And what do I say to her now? I’m sorry I tortured you, I was too stupid to put two and two together?

She didn’t have to say anything. Kit said, looking like she’d just been arrested for a crime, “How’d you find out?” She opened the door, shivering in a halter top, capri pants, and no shoes, and to Joanna she looked even thinner and more drawn, or was that only because now she knew?

“Why didn’t you tell us that night?” Joanna said. “I mean,
Runaway Bride!”

“Rule Number One of Dish Night,” Kit said. “No discussion of work. It was all right. One of the things that was so terrible was the way everybody tiptoed around me. Still tiptoes around me.” She smiled wryly. “My cousin got married last summer, and nobody told me. I found out by accident. Which, I suppose, is how you found out.”

Joanna nodded. “Betty Peterson told me. The one who found out the title of the book. Her little sister told her.”

“And I should have told you,” Kit said. “It was just so nice having somebody treat me like a person instead of a . . . ”

Disaster victim, Joanna thought, and realized why Kit had reminded her so much of Maisie.

“You have no idea the things people do to you trying to comfort you,” Kit said. “They say, ‘You’ll fall in love again,’ and, ‘At least he didn’t suffer.’ How do you know? I wanted to ask them. How do you know he didn’t suffer?”

I told her I saw the
Titanic
, Joanna thought, feeling sick. I introduced the possibility that Kevin didn’t die instantly, that he experienced something terrible, something terrifying.

“My aunt Julia kept saying, ‘God never sends us more than we can bear,’ ” Kit was saying, “and, ‘You need to be thankful it was quick.’ Well, it was. So quick I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

And so you get to say good-bye to Mr. Briarley instead, Joanna thought. An endless, agonizing good-bye.

“The only one who didn’t say any of those things was Uncle Pat. He was wonderful. He didn’t try to tell me it was going to be all right or that Kevin was in a better place or that I’d get over it. He didn’t tell me any lies at all. He took me in, talked to me about Coleridge and Kevin and Shakespeare, made me tea, made me finish college. He saved my life,” she said, staring blindly toward the library, “and then when he got sick . . . My mother thinks I’m in denial, that I believe I can save him, or that I’m punishing myself somehow . . . He doesn’t say those things on purpose, you know. He . . . I think he has a fragmented memory of Kevin and something bad happening and a wedding, and he keeps trying to put it together in his mind, even though most of the pieces are missing.”

Like me, Joanna thought, trying to remember what Mr. Briarley said, trying to piece together the connection.

“I know I can’t save him,” Kit said. “I know he’ll have to go into a nursing facility eventually, but—”

“You have to try,” Joanna said, and Kit smiled suddenly at her.

“I have to try. He saved my life. I want to stay with him as long as I can.” And keep the lights on, Joanna thought, so the passengers don’t panic.

“And I want to help you,” Kit said. “I still haven’t been able to find anything about a post office, but—”

“No,” Joanna said. “Absolutely not. I’ve already made you
watch
Runaway Bride.
I’m not going to force you to do research on a disaster.”

“I want to,” Kit said. “I love the idea of actually being able to
help
someone for a change. And it’s an appropriate disaster.”

“Appropriate?”

She nodded. “There were eight honeymoon couples on the
Titanic.
Most of them didn’t get a chance to say good-bye either.” She smiled sadly. “They didn’t realize they were never going to see each other again. Some of the men even made jokes as the boats were lowered. They laughed and said, ‘Put the brides and grooms in first,’ and, ‘We won’t let you back on the ship without a pass.’ ”

“And did they? Let the brides and grooms get in the boats first?”

“Two of them,” Kit said. She stood up abruptly, got several typed sheets out of a drawer, and handed them to Joanna. “Here’s everything I could find on the engines stopping and what various passengers and crew heard when the iceberg hit.”